IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/indcch/v14y2005i3p469-500.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Variety and the evolution of refinery processing

Author

Listed:
  • Phuong Nguyen
  • Pier-Paolo Saviotti
  • Michel Trommetter
  • Bernard Bourgeois

Abstract

Evolutionary theories of economic development stress the role of variety as both a determinant and a result of growth. In this paper we develop a measure of variety, based on Weitzman's maximum likelihood procedure. This measure is based on the distance between products, and indicates the degree of differentiation of a product population. We propose a generic method, which enables the regrouping of products with very similar characteristics values before choosing randomly the product models to be used to calculate Weitzman's measure. We apply the variety measure to process characteristics of oil refining. The results obtained for this technology show classic evolutionary specialization patterns that can be understood on the basis of niche theory. Here the changes in variety are related to changes in the range of the services the technology considered can deliver, a range which plays a role similar to that of the size of the habitat of a biological species. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Phuong Nguyen & Pier-Paolo Saviotti & Michel Trommetter & Bernard Bourgeois, 2005. "Variety and the evolution of refinery processing," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 14(3), pages 469-500, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:indcch:v:14:y:2005:i:3:p:469-500
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. By Michael Funke & Ralf Ruhwedel, 2001. "Product Variety and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence for the OECD Countries," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 48(2), pages 1-1.
    2. Frenken, Koen & Saviotti, Paolo P. & Trommetter, Michel, 1999. "Variety and niche creation in aircraft, helicopters, motorcycles and microcomputers," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 469-488, June.
    3. Stavins, Robert & Jaffe, Adam & Newell, Richard, 2000. "Technological Change and the Environment," Working Paper Series rwp00-002, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    4. Saviotti, P P & Mani, G S, 1995. "Competition, Variety and Technological Evolution: A Replicator Dynamics Model," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 369-392, December.
    5. Herbert A. Simon, 1996. "The Sciences of the Artificial, 3rd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262691914, April.
    6. Kelvin J. Lancaster, 1966. "A New Approach to Consumer Theory," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 74(2), pages 132-132.
    7. Gibbons, M. & Coombs, R. & Saviotti, P. & Stubbs, P. C., 1982. "Innovation and technical change : A case study of the U.K. tractor industry, 1957 1977," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 11(5), pages 289-310, October.
    8. Pier Paolo Saviotti (ed.), 2003. "Applied Evolutionary Economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2560.
    9. Utterback, James M. & Suarez, Fernando F., 1993. "Innovation, competition, and industry structure," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 1-21, February.
    10. Romer, Paul M, 1987. "Growth Based on Increasing Returns Due to Specialization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(2), pages 56-62, May.
    11. Mark Bils & Peter J. Klenow, 2001. "The Acceleration of Variety Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 274-280, May.
    12. Saviotti, P. P. & Metcalfe, J. S., 1984. "A theoretical approach to the construction of technological output indicators," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 141-151, June.
    13. Pier P. Saviotti, 1996. "Technological Evolution, Variety and the Economy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 727.
    14. Chris Freeman & Luc Soete, 1997. "The Economics of Industrial Innovation, 3rd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 3, volume 1, number 0262061953, April.
    15. Lancaster, Kelvin, 1975. "Socially Optimal Product Differentiation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(4), pages 567-585, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carolina Castaldi & Roberto Fontana & Alessandro Nuvolari, 2009. "‘Chariots of fire’: the evolution of tank technology, 1915–1945," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 545-566, August.
    2. Dengsheng Wu & Xiaoli Lu & Jianping Li & Jing Li, 2020. "Does the institutional diversity of editorial boards increase journal quality? The case economics field," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1579-1597, August.
    3. Qiuju Zhou & Ronald Rousseau & Liying Yang & Ting Yue & Guoliang Yang, 2012. "A general framework for describing diversity within systems and similarity between systems with applications in informetrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 93(3), pages 787-812, December.
    4. Karolina Safarzyńska & Jeroen Bergh, 2010. "Evolutionary models in economics: a survey of methods and building blocks," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 329-373, June.
    5. David W. Meyer & Christopher T. Taylor, 2018. "The Determinants of Plant Exit: the Evolution of the U.S. Refining Industry," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 429-448, December.
    6. Martin Woerter, 2009. "Industry diversity and its impact on the innovation performance of firms," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 19(5), pages 675-700, October.
    7. Frenken, Koen & Pyka, Andreas & Verspagen, Bart & Windrum, Paul, 2010. "Innovation, qualitative change and economic development--Special issue in honour of Pier-Paolo Saviotti," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 1-4, March.
    8. Witt, Ulrich, 2010. "Symbolic consumption and the social construction of product characteristics," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 17-25, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pier Paolo Saviotti & Andreas Pyka, 2009. "Product variety, competition and economic growth," Springer Books, in: Uwe Cantner & Jean-Luc Gaffard & Lionel Nesta (ed.), Schumpeterian Perspectives on Innovation, Competition and Growth, pages 71-95, Springer.
    2. Frenken, Koen & Saviotti, Paolo P. & Trommetter, Michel, 1999. "Variety and niche creation in aircraft, helicopters, motorcycles and microcomputers," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 469-488, June.
    3. Frenken, Koen & Pyka, Andreas & Verspagen, Bart & Windrum, Paul, 2010. "Innovation, qualitative change and economic development--Special issue in honour of Pier-Paolo Saviotti," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 1-4, March.
    4. Saviotti, Pier Paolo & Pyka, Andreas, 2004. "Economic development, qualitative change and employment creation," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 265-287, September.
    5. Pier-Paolo Saviotti & Andreas Pyka, 2004. "Economic Development, Variety and Employment," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 55(6), pages 1023-1049.
    6. Murmann, Johann Peter & Frenken, Koen, 2006. "Toward a systematic framework for research on dominant designs, technological innovations, and industrial change," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(7), pages 925-952, September.
    7. Ljubica Nedelkoska, 2010. "Occupations at risk: The task content and job stability," Jena Economics Research Papers 2010-024, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    8. Pier Saviotti & Koen Frenken, 2008. "Export variety and the economic performance of countries," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 201-218, April.
    9. Jurgen Essletzbichler & David Rigby, 2005. "Technological evolution as creative destruction of process heterogeneity: evidence from US plant-level data," Economic Systems Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(1), pages 25-45.
    10. Dosi, Giovanni & Nelson, Richard R., 2010. "Technical Change and Industrial Dynamics as Evolutionary Processes," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 51-127, Elsevier.
    11. Koen Frenken & Alessandro Nuvolari, 2004. "Entropy statistics as a framework to analyse technological evolution," Chapters, in: John Foster & Werner Hölzl (ed.), Applied Evolutionary Economics and Complex Systems, chapter 5, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Giovanni Dosi & Xiaodan Yu, 2018. "Capabilities Accumulation and Development: What History Tells the Theory," LEM Papers Series 2018/27, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    13. Giovanni Dosi & Richard Nelson, 2013. "The Evolution of Technologies: An Assessment of the State-of-the-Art," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 3(1), pages 3-46, June.
    14. Frenken, Koen & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2000. "Scaling trajectories in civil aircraft (1913-1997)," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 331-348, March.
    15. Paul Windrum & Cecilia Diaz & Despoina Filiou, 2009. "Exploring the relationship between technical and service characteristics," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 567-588, August.
    16. Andreas Pyka & Uwe Cantner & Alfred Greiner & Thomas Kuhn (ed.), 2009. "Recent Advances in Neo-Schumpeterian Economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12982.
    17. Nicoletta Corrocher & Marco Guerzoni, 2009. "Product variety and price strategy in the ski manufacturing industry," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 471-486, August.
    18. Faïz Gallouj & Maria Savona, 2010. "Towards a Theory of Innovation in Services: A State of the Art," Chapters, in: Faïz Gallouj & Faridah Djellal (ed.), The Handbook of Innovation and Services, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Gallouj, Faiz & Weinstein, Olivier, 1997. "Innovation in services," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(4-5), pages 537-556, December.
    20. Stanislao Gualdi & Antoine Mandel, 2019. "Endogenous growth in production networks," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 91-117, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality
    • L93 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Air Transportation
    • Q40 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:indcch:v:14:y:2005:i:3:p:469-500. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/icc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.